City, state provide $600,000 to build eco-friendly houses in Cleveland

The Cuyahoga Community Land Trust has received $600,000 in state and city funds to build five new affordable and environmentally sensitive houses in Cleveland designed by recent architecture-school graduates.

The houses, on which construction will begin this summer, will be the first-fruits of an effort by the Cleveland Green Building Coalition aimed at educating young designers in the arts of designing houses that are good both for the environment and the owners' pocketbooks.

The two- and three-bedroom houses, which will be priced from $105,000 to $125,000, are designed to cost less than $400 a year to heat and about $250 a year to light, according to Meghan Kleon, who administers the Emerging Green Designers group for the coalition.

Kleon said she first received word about the city and state money this week.

"It's fantastic," she said today. "This shows a real commitment by the city and the state to support affordable green housing."

Jim Ptacek, one of the architects who helped design the new houses, said the city and state investments mean that designs on paper "are going to jump to bricks and sticks."

The money for the houses, including $450,000 from the Ohio Housing Finance Agency and $150,000 from Cleveland's housing trust fund, will be used to help build the houses and lower the purchase prices, said Marge Misak, director of the Cuyahoga Community Land Trust.

The land trust and the Green Building Coalition partnered on the project with other agencies including the Detroit Shoreway Community Development Organization and Cleveland EcoVillage.

The new houses will be part of the EcoVillage, a development of environmentally sensitive houses built around the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority's West 65th Street Rapid station.

The houses have been designed with recycled and regionally produced materials. They also incorporate features such as built-in ramps and wheelchair-accessible doorways, which will enable residents to "age in place."

The workshops that resulted in the house designs were led by Jim LaRue, a Cleveland green design consultant.

The 13 participants were mainly recent graduates of architecture schools who were still in their 20s and who were following the traditional path toward a architect's license by interning with professional firms and preparing for the licensing exam.

Among them were Sara Johansen, Scott Sturm, Todd Large, Marla A. Caserta, Joshua Lloyd and Nick Prato. Some have left the city to pursue careers elsewhere, but a good number are still working for Cleveland-area firms.